Jolting trip to mailbox

Lightning survivor gets hole in cap, skips hospital

SUMMERVILLE — It was raining and lightning was popping when Greg Schneider went out to check the mail shortly before 6 p.m. Thursday.

That's about all Schneider, 37, remembers after a lightning strike burned a 2-inch hole in his favorite Ducks Unlimited baseball cap.

Schneider wound up sprawled on his back on the front lawn of his house on Alwyn Boulevard.

"There was mail all around him," neighbor Brian Koellner said.

Schneider said he came to as Koellner's 11-year-old son, Taylor, poked him and called out, "Mr. Greg, Mr. Greg."

Another neighbor leaned over him and asked, "Greg, are you OK? Your hat's smoking."

Paramedics tried to get Schneider to go to the hospital, but he refused.

He complained of a twitch in his right eye and said he ached down to his joints. He was initially unable to recall his own birth date, and about an hour after the strike he still didn't remember driving home from his job as a general contractor.

It's not unusual for people struck by lightning to suffer from memory loss, according to the National Weather Service. Other symptoms include attention deficits, sleep disorders, numbness, dizziness, joint stiffness, irritability, fatigue, weakness, muscle spasms, depression and an inability to sit for long.

Schneider pointed to a small black spot on the bottom of his right foot near his toes that he said wasn't there before the strike. He was wearing brown, rubber flip-flops that weren't damaged.

His dark brown, curly hair was falling out in the area underneath the hole in his olive-colored cap. "I got half a haircut," he joked with Koellner.

He just doesn't want to remember how it happened.

Emergency crews told Schneider the lightning most likely hit something nearby and traveled over to him. He said he was walking away from his metal mailbox when he was hit.

Documented lightning injuries in the United States average about 300 per year, but undocumented injuries are likely much higher, the National Weather Service said. A 17-year-old soccer player died Wednesday in Spartanburg after he was struck on the head by a lightning bolt.

Reach Nita Birmingham at 745-5858 or nbirmingham@postandcourier.com.